RICHARD ARNOLD is gone and Sir Jim Ratcliffe is about to take control of 25 per cent of the club.
All will be well again, it seems.
PASir Jim Ratcliffe is set to acquire a minority stake in Manchester United[/caption]
PAFormer Red Devils Chief Executive Officer Richard Arnold is the first casualty of the Ratcliffe era[/caption]
PAFormer Red Devil Gary Neville predicted trouble for Arnold when he took the role[/caption]
Two Manchester United fans I saw after the news broke claimed this would get the soul of the club back and rediscover the DNA.
Why? How? And what is it?
There was an Ole Gunnar Solskjaer press conference once where the former manager said the DNA was in the brickwork and pointed to a wall in the room.
We all followed his point and gaze, looked at the brickwork, stayed silent and looked back to him. The DNA?
Yes, it is about bringing youth players through, which the Old Trafford club continue to try and do.
Yes, it is about playing entertaining football — the problem being that the opposition has become better and wants to stop you doing that.
And then there is . . .?
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United legend Gary Neville cannot go a day without telling us the club is rotten from top to bottom.
Not once has he said what he would do if he was in charge tomorrow. It is just a constant boring rant from someone who cannot stand being challenged.
Maybe Neville does not like the fact he has not been invited to be involved.
The club has long since grown tired of his sermons.
To suggest that outgoing chief executive Arnold — as well as his predecessor Ed Woodward — did not have the club at heart is wrong.
Spend any time in their company and you realise how much they yearned for success, how much they loved United.
People blithely go on about how former CEO David Gill was the steady hand on the tiller in partnership with Sir Alex Ferguson. No, he just happened to be CEO when Sir Alex was manager.
They were able to get deals done because they were winning titles.
Gill said “debt is the road to ruin” in opposition to the 2005 Glazer takeover and then happily stayed on in his position getting paid a vast sum by the American owners.
He went when Fergie got out in 2013.
Indeed the lack of investment in the squad over their closing years led to the problem David Moyes had with an aging set of players.
It was Woodward who got the Glazers to open the purse strings — while in the background his Bristol University friend Arnold generated the sort of commercial opportunities that had been untapped under Gill.
Yes, the duo have been a major part of the Glazer regime.
But the money brought in by them helped offset what was going out to service the debt, so that north of £1BILLION over the last decade could be spent on players.
Manchester United fans have grown tired of Gary Neville’s preachingREX
Arnold succeeded Woodward as CEO early last year and bought pints for anti-Glazer protestors in a Cheshire pub in June 2022 and admitted the club was a “nightmare” and had “f***ing burned through cash”.
It was a damning verdict on Woodward’s reign but it showed that he cared.
The former accountant came under fire for his handling of the recent Mason Greenwood investigation.
But he secured a record-breaking ten-year kit deal with Adidas in July worth almost £1bn, plus a shirt sponsorship agreement with Qualcomm worth £60million a season.
Arnold also tried to persuade the Glazers to stop taking dividends and, unlike Woodward, left the football side to the managers and director of football John Murtough.
Woodward has gone and now Arnold is on his way, so fans are hailing this as a new dawn. It’s not.
One fan said to me about Ratcliffe yesterday: “He’s a United fan who lived down the road.”
So why did he try to buy Chelsea?
What nous does the chairman of a petrochemicals group have to turn United’s sinking ship around.
Particularly when, with only 25 per cent, his every decision can be outvoted. He will be in charge of football operations though and the infrastructure of the club, we hear.
GETTYSir Jim Ratcliffe will acquire a 25 per cent stake of Manchester United[/caption]
There is no doubt Old Trafford has gone into decay.
Yet there is no push from any quarter to swap it for one of the soulless grounds that all look like each other.
The other complaint is that the Carrington training ground is not fit for purpose.
It is, it’s fine. The pitches are perfect, the facilities are everything a team needs.
The Treble season of 1999 came from The Cliff. Visit there and wonder how?
As a youth team coach at United inferred to me once, the better the facilities the more mollycoddled players can feel.
So, yes Arnold has gone.
“Yes, he and the Glazers pushed the final button on transfers.
But they trusted in the manager’s choices. Signings are only “scattergun” when they don’t come off.
Nobody was suggesting the 2018 acquisition of Alexis Sanchez was a mistake at the time.
Nobody realised what a shocking character and influence he was at a time when they needed him.
Sir Alex bought some shockers too — where is Bebe nowadays? But he got through it because of his genius.
There was a United under him, there is a United now and the fact that they are not winning the league is not down to Arnold.
Nor if they ever do win it again, will it be down to Ratcliffe.